John Dyer (1700–1758) was an English poet, author of Grongar Hill (1727), The Ruins of Rome (1740), etc.
CLOPTON MONUMENTS
Page 194.—Flawns. A kind of custard-pie. Compare Ben Jonson, Sad Shepherdess, i. 2:—
"Fall to your cheese-cakes, curds, and clouted cream,
Your fools, your flawns," etc.
The fools were also a kind of custard, or fruit with whipped cream, etc. Gooseberry-fool is still an English dish.
Page 195.—The cost of the sheep-shearing feast. Mr. Knight makes a little slip here. The Clown, on his way to buy materials for the feast, tries to reckon up mentally what the wool from the shearing will bring. "Let me see," he says; "every 'leven wether tods [that is, yields a tod, or 28 pounds of wool]; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn,—what comes the wool to?" Then, after vainly attempting to make out what the amount will be, he adds: "I cannot do 't without counters" (round pieces of metal used in reckoning), and, giving up the problem, turns to considering what he is to buy for his sister: "Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers,—three-man songmen all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace, dates—none; that's out of my note: nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger,—but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun." Three-man songmen are singers of catches in three parts. Means are tenors. Warden pies are pies made of wardens, a kind of large pears, which were usually baked or roasted. A race of ginger is a root of it; and raisins o' the sun are raisins dried in the sun.
Page 196.—Paul Hentzner. He was a native of Silesia (1558–1623) who wrote a Journey through Germany, France, Italy, etc.